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Therapeutic Communication with Adolescents

Therapeutic Communication with Adolescents

We are very pleased to present the Therapeutic Communication Skills with Adolescents course in Manchester and Leeds as part of the new mini prospectus: COURSES IN PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES.

This three day skills-based programme is informed by psychoanalytic and developmental research and clinical practice. The course provides knowledge and skills to help practitioners from a diverse range of backgrounds and services to work more effectively with young people. It will provide information to support understanding of the differing needs of young people, and how to work with them, across the stages of adolescent development.

The focus of the course is on active-containment and on behaviour as communication. Understanding the meaning and manifestations of anxiety is central to this process, both as necessarily developmental and when more of an obstacle to growth and to the use of helping relationships.

The course has two components; three Personality Development (PD) Seminars on puberty, adolescence and late adolescence. These are part of the main PD series.

Each of these is followed by a two hour workshop which builds participants’ skills in therapeutic communications.

The interplay of internal and external factors in the young person’s development is considered with a focus on aiming to re-establish thinking and meaning at a time of life when this might be avoided, especially at times of stress and distress.

In understanding common adolescent difficulties in normal development, this course will introduce a practical psychoanalytic, developmental approach to engaging with adolescents in multiple settings. Skills are demonstrated and practiced to enable participants to use psychoanalytically informed active-containment alongside existing skills.

Although these workshops are ostensibly concerned with the earliest weeks and years of life they are appropriate for any practitioner working with children, adolescents and adults. States of acute emotional dependency persist throughout our lives, most particularly in times of stress, anxiety or trauma. Recognizing these states in adults and older children is invaluable in informing our responses to them.

For more information about all courses mentioned above, and mini-prospectus with application form, click here.